


Only Kindness Matters

by A_Kid_Named_Hiro



Series: MadaTobi Week [12]
Category: Naruto, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Crossover, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 21:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17609210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Kid_Named_Hiro/pseuds/A_Kid_Named_Hiro
Summary: Prompts:Supernatural/Fantasy(fromMadaTobi Week 2018).Everything for You(selected byAshfrom200 Writing Challenge).





	Only Kindness Matters

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: _Supernatural/Fantasy_ (from **[MadaTobi Week 2018](https://madatobiweek.tumblr.com/post/174594542851/madatobi-week-2018-prompts)** ).
> 
>  _Everything for You_ (selected by **[Ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashida)** from **[200 Writing Challenge](https://www.deviantart.com/insane-1/art/200-Writing-Challenge-68163506)** ).

**[then]**

 

It's the end of the world.

You can feel it in these fingers, scratching the back of your seat, the way they dance with excitement and glee, uncontained. Greedy, urgent fingers that move like they're celebrating, like _hurry up, hurry up, hurry up._

You feel it in these eyes that roll against your will, that see nothing but dark beneath the blindfold upon your face. Your face that the you-who-wasn't-really-you clawed and gouged just moments before. Skin giving way to blood giving way to despair. You can still feel the blood beneath your nails, upon the pads of your fingers that dance, dance, dance to the rhythm of Tobirama's unmaking.

_Tobirama._

You can hear him fighting. It's in every violent jerk of the driver's seat, every lurch of the car. The sound of his feet kicking against the pedals, the floor of his BMW. His breaths. His choked words. The sudden silence of the engine dying, the stillness that rings and rings in your ears like you've lost your hearing in both.

Ringing like Tobirama's phone, and you know it's Hashirama on the other end, panicking because Kawarama is most assuredly stopping, ceasing, breaking, fading.

There is stillness, and then there is Tobirama, still alive, still fighting with every gasp for breath, with every _frantic-hopeful-agonized_ beat of your heart.

You who are helpless and useless and all the things your father made you believe about yourself. You who are bound and blind in the backseat while your lover is _fighting-protecting-dying_ mere inches from you.

  


* * *

  


**[then, but earlier]**

 

Life is a narrow room with no windows.

Life is a room with a single door, and your father holds the key to it.

You struggle for breath in this claustrophobic existence. Pain is all you know. The burn in your lungs. In your body. The sharp, tearing thing that rips through you when you lie crumpled on the floor, even when you aren't bleeding.

Life is your mother's words that strip away what little is left of your spirit, the underscore to the rhythm of your father's fists.

Every day, you learn pain. You learn humiliation. You learn that you are unknowable and not worth knowing.

Life is a prison.

But it is not the end of the world.

  


* * *

  


**[then]**

 

There is no life without Tobirama.

You know this when you rush headlong into darkness, embracing it, running away because it is the only way you can _do something._

You grasp at what little is left of Cabeswater.

Cabeswater that's as claustrophobic as you once were. Cabeswater that now knows pain and darkness. Cabeswater that fights like its dreamer does.

You run because you have to. You reach for a lifeline. A small sliver of hope. You know that you might die here. That Dan and Tsunade and Jiraiya would have to watch you unmade too.

And you think, if you fail, if the demon succeeds, dying would be a good thing.

Because a world without Tobirama is no world worth living in.

And then you meet Mito.

  


* * *

  


**[now]**

 

You aren't looking at him, but you can feel his eyes on you.

He's _always_ looking at you.

You can feel his gaze upon your hair like his breath against the side of your face, like his arms around you.

You're sitting on the edge of his — your — bed, bare feet upon cool tile. He's seated behind you, his chest to your back, his legs against yours, his arms folded across your waist.

You trace the skin on his forearms. The soft leather of his wristbands. "It's funny," you say, staring at the paleness of his skin, the fine hairs upon his arm, "how I was always running away even when I was standing still."

Tobirama's arm uncurls from your waist. He brushes the hair from your face. Presses a kiss to your deaf ear. Says, "You're not running _now._ "

You feel the flutter of his breath, the heat of it against your skin. The rhythm of his pulse, beneath that wristband. The beat of his heart against your back.

You think back to when you'd watched him die. His dream self. His real self. Back when he'd saved you from your father. Back when he and Dan had run all the way to the courthouse. When he'd dreamed that lotion for your chapped hands. When he'd covered your rent.

Back when he'd looked — _really looked_ — at you. When he'd kissed you, right here in this room.

Back when the one time you ran away was the one time that really mattered.

  


* * *

  


**[then]**

 

Tobirama's life is ending and Mito is here, speaking in impossible solutions.

Wise, vague Mito, teacher and mother and sister you never had, reminding you that the demon _isn't_ Cabeswater, that similar is not the same, even as your hands and eyes delight in the destruction of all that you hold dear.

Mito — calm against your chaos — who helps you _see,_ blind as you are.

The world is split in two.

Outward, the sound of Dan and Tsunade's fear. Jiraiya's helplessness. Kagami's terrifying silence. Tobirama's fading consciousness. His dreams, real as you can hear them against the car, upon the asphalt. All that matters is being unmade.

Glee and joy and triumph in your hands, your eyes. Futility in your bones.

Inward, you are safe. You have _her._

You have hope.

  


* * *

  


**[now]**

 

Somewhere out there, Dan and Tsunade are driving their twin cars across the country. Or rather, Tsunade would be curled up in the Pig's front seat. Dan would have a hand upon the steering wheel and a hand in hers. Jiraiya would be driving Tsunade's car, alone but not lonely. Not anymore.

This, you know.

You know that they're somewhere in Tennessee, chasing life and dreams with all the passion with which Dan had chased Glendower, and with none of the urgency, none of the empty bitterness after.

There would only be companionship. There would be dumbassery. There would be some measure of peace.

Somewhere out there, your friends — your found family — are blissfully, finally _free._

But real freedom is _this._

Tobirama pressing you down upon the sheets, covering your body with his own, covering your mouth with his.

Real freedom is his kiss that tastes like _want,_ like _gratitude,_ like _mine, mine, mine._

It is your name upon his lips like his hands in your hair, beneath your clothes, all over your skin.

Your pride. Your mask. He strips them from you the way he pulls the clothes from your body, lays you bare and vulnerable before him.

"Madara," he says, and in it you read wonder and desire and _love._

He moves between your thighs. His are eyes that burn bright amid the dark. His mouth is a hard, wicked, ravenous thing.

You remember the things he dreamed, scattered upon the street that bled, bled, bled. Scraps of paper with your words upon them, gold and blue and a river of red. The blackness that oozed out of his nose. His eyes that sparked and dimmed and flickered back to life.

He had fought. For Dan and Tsunade. For Kagami. _For you, for you, for you._

You wrap yourself around him.

Like it's the end of the world.

Like you can't let go.

  


* * *

  


**[now]**

 

Your hands upon his back. These hands that tried to kill him once. These hands that held his. Hands that remember.

You feel the corded muscles that tense and bunch beneath his skin. You know the strength of his spine. The paths of his tattoo, this incredible thing that is as much a dream as it is a reality.

_Unguibus et rostro._

Sometimes you think that Tobirama _is_ a dream. You think he is too beautiful to be real, to be _kind._

But he _is_ kind. You see it in his fierce loyalty to Dan. His respect for Tsunade. His affection for Kagami. How selflessly he loves Kawarama, how easily he forgives Hashirama, even when he pretends not to care.

You feel it in his touch. The way his lips drag over your cheek, your jaw. The way he claims you with all that he is. The way he looks at you. The way he lets you _see._

Tobirama is rough hands and rough edges, a good, good heart.

His body against yours. His hands all over you. _Himself,_ inside you. Breath against your cheek. Your name a possessive sound upon his tongue.

You cling to him, fingers upon the ink on his back. In his eyes, you read trust. Read, _acceptance._

You let yourself fall.

  


* * *

  


**[then]**

 

Life is a windowless room. It is two open doors.

The first is a boy with a broken car. A boy with a dream. Good intentions beneath clumsy words. Fire and persistence within his bones.

The second is a man with a musical model car. A man who dreams things and people and ideas into life. Kindness beneath hard eyes and rough words, amid a dark past and endless secrets.

Your life starts with Katou Dan.

It truly begins with Senju Tobirama.

  


* * *

  


**[now]**

 

It feels like so long ago now, when you'd kissed him here on the front porch. You sit and watch the earth, the air, the trees. Watch Kagami chasing fireflies, singing in the language you are learning to understand. Watch him pull on Tobirama's hand, grinning, dancing. _"Kerah!"_ he says, and there is joy and untainted innocence in it.

You watch Tobirama's smile and Kagami's laugh and you try not to think about how you'd nearly lost them both.

Kagami runs to you and tugs on the old watch around your wrist. You let him have it. Then he pulls on your hand. "Come!"

Tobirama's eyes upon you. They call you, pull you toward him, even as he stands still amid all this life, amid the fireflies and the breeze and Chainsaw who circles him.

Tobirama, Greywaren, the _true_ magician, _yours._

You reach him and he pulls you close. Lips upon your forehead, your eyelids, your cheek. His hands find yours. He lifts them to his lips, presses gentle kisses upon your knuckles.

_These hands. These eyes._

_"Madara,"_ he says, and in it you hear your beginning.


End file.
